Children of Chaos
by Lisa Telramor
Summary: A heist goes awry and a group of individuals gets regressed to toddler age. Whether it's the apotoxin or some other factor, Shinichi and Ai find that they're the only ones who didn't change and now have six toddlers to keep track of.


_For the commentfic prompt: Any, any de-aged to childhood characters, they love tearing things up and making a mess_

 _This isn't really handled seriously, more of a laugh and point at how badly Shinichi would handle looking after a bunch of toddlers._

o0O0o

Conan had thought Kaitou Kid was a handful. Kaitou Kid had nothing on his toddler self. Conan swore as Kid streaked by, naked and carrying double handfuls of rice from an overturned bag. A bag that should have been in the pantry, on a shelf far above a two year old's reach, behind a closed door with a handle that should have similarly been impossible to grab. He was shrieking at the top of his lungs.

Conan would have run after him, except that he was currently restraining a two year old Genta from putting random, choke-able objects in his mouth. Behind him, toddler Hattori was pulling books off Agasa's shelves while toddlers Ayumi and Mitsuhiko made a mess with an inkwell they'd gotten somewhere. Probably from Kid.

For every book Hattori pulled down, two year old Hakuba followed after and tried to put it back in its place with a frown on his face.

Hattori noticed and shoved the haphazard books back off the shelf. Hakuba took one look at the mess, sat down, and started crying.

Kid ran back into the room, still screaming, and tripped. Rice flew everywhere. Now he was crying too, and Shinichi was sorely tempted to join in. "Haibara?" he called desperately. "A little help?"

"Busy!" she called from the relative safety of Agasa's office. Relative, because there was a child Agasa corralled in there with her. Nominally, she was supposed to be figuring out what had happened. Nominally. Conan thought she was just hiding from the chaos.

"It's like dealing with hell spawn!" He grabbed a pen cap from Genta's fists before it could be choked on. This would be much easier if he could just…corral them somewhere. With nothing in reach. It was a small miracle they'd gotten everyone back to Agasa's house.

"I said I'm busy!" Haibara called back. "I'm phoning Ran."

"How the hell are we going to explain this?!"

"I have no idea, but neither of us are knowledgeable about children, so if you have a better idea, please, tell me."

He could imagine her rolling her eyes at him. He counted down from ten and pulled at Genta's hand. "Okay, let's go cheer up the others." Genta didn't want to follow. Genta was going to follow anyway, Conan thought grimly as he half dragged the toddler across the room to the bookshelf. Hattori seemed to have gotten bored with knocking things off the shelf and was flipping through one of the volumes, haphazardly tearing pages with his enthusiasm. Hakuba was still bawling his eyes out.

"Hey," Conan said to Hakuba, letting Genta get distracted by the bits of paper Hattori was tossing around. If he ate a bit of paper, well, it probably wouldn't kill him. Unlike the magnets he'd confiscated earlier. "Hey, it's okay, the mess will get cleaned up." Eventually. He snuck a glance at Kid. He wasn't crying anymore, just sniffling a little now that the shock of tripping was over with. He didn't look like he was injured.

"Issall wrong!" Hakuba bawled.

There had to be some cruel karma at work here that had left Conan and Haibara the only ones not affected by…whatever it was that had hit the rest of them in their tussle with Kid. At least there wasn't a baby Nakamori-keibu to deal with, Conan thought as he tried to get Hakuba calmed down.

He managed to get Hakuba mostly calm before Kid barreled into him screeching, "Sprise attack!" Conan went down face first into a pile of books.

"Fuck," Conan hissed. Everything felt bruised. Hakuba looked as scandalized as a toddler could manage.

"That's a bad word," Hakuba said.

Kid giggled a few feet away like he expected Conan to get up and chase him.

Conan narrowed his eyes. Enough was enough. "You!" He pointed at Kid. "Sit down!"

He must have sounded serious because Kid sat, wide eyed.

"Genta!" Conan rounded on him before he could stick any more paper in his mouth. He really didn't want to know how much he'd ingested already. "No! No eating paper! No eating anything off the ground! We can have snack time later!" He scowled at Hattori. "Heiji, stop. You're breaking the books. Ayumi, Mitsuhiko…" He hesitated. They looked at him with the same wide-eyed surprise Kid had on his face. They were covered in inky handprints, staining the oversized shirts they were wearing, their skin, and the carpet. He didn't have much hope that those stains could be removed. "You need a bath."

He looked back at Hakuba who flinched like he was expecting to get yelled at too. Conan sighed and patted his head. "You're fine. You were the only one trying to help." He looked back around at the children and did his best 'adult' voice. "Okay, here's what we're going to do. We're all going to go to the kitchen and sit quietly. Ayumi, Mitsuhiko, you're going to wash up." He looked at Kid, unsure how to address him. "…You…are going to put your shirt back on." Kid blew a raspberry, clearly not agreeing. "You're going to put a shirt on," Conan repeated firmly, "and if you're all good and listen to me, you each get a cookie." He hoped that giving them sugar wouldn't backfire. He didn't have much besides Agasa's hidden sweets stash to bargain with. "Okay?"

Genta nodded eagerly. Hakuba still had a frown on his face, but Conan didn't think he'd smile until there wasn't a mess surrounding him anymore. Kid was the one he was really worried about. They stared each other down. Kid pouted.

"Fine," he mumbled, crossing his arms in a picture of reluctance. "Chocolate cookie?"

"Sure." There were chocolate covered something or others last Conan knew in that stash. Agasa would forgive him for revealing its location to Haibara eventually.

The children were suspiciously meek as they followed him to the kitchen—the kitchen wasn't nearly as destroyed as he'd thought. There was a trail of rice from the pantry and all the cupboard doors were open, but aside from Kid's shirt in the middle of the room and a chair shoved next to the pantry door, there wasn't much out of place.

By the time Ran arrived, Conan had Ayumi and Mitsuhiko marginally cleaner, Kid in his shirt (under protest), and all six children besides Agasa sitting in a circle on the kitchen floor eating their cookies with small paper cups of water next to them. He hadn't the foggiest where to go from there since he'd used his bargaining chip to get them to behave this much, so when she appeared in the doorway he could have cried with relief.

"Oh thank god," he said.

Ran looked at the children with wide eyes. "This is going to take a lot of explaining."

"I'll explain as soon as I can make a guess as to what caused it," Conan said. "Please tell me you know how to handle toddlers."

"I've never tried," Ran admitted. "They seem pretty calm…"

"You saw the mess?" Conan waved a hand at the children. "They're a force of chaos."

"Oh good," Haibara said from behind Ran. "It's safe to come out…did you give them sugar?"

"Uh…"

"Where did you get those cookies?"

Conan shifted uncomfortably. He was almost relieved when Kid broke the stare down by announcing himself done with his cookie and promptly stripping naked again. Almost.

o0O0o

Whatever the cause, it wore off overnight. Conan woke from an uncomfortable sleep on Agasa's armchair to shouts from one of the guest bedrooms. He ran down the hall to find a full grown Hattori, Kid and Hakuba sprawled across each other in bed, dressed only in t-shirts.

"We're never speaking of this again," Kid hissed, red faced and mortified. Most of his face was hidden in his hands, making it difficult to tell what he looked like.

"Agreed," Hakuba said.

"Get the fuck off of me," Hattori said from under Hakuba. "And put some fucking pants on. And get me some pants," he added.

Conan laughed himself sick.


End file.
